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Lights and Shadows of Yosemite (1926) by Katherine Ames Taylor

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- Title Page

- Table of Contents

- Foreword

- Frontispiece Quotation—“The Range of Light”

- In the Beginning—Origin of Yosemite

- Early Occupants—The Indians

- Discovery of Yosemite by the White Men

- Pioneer Days in the Yosemite—Early Travelers

- Old Yosemite Landmarks

- Yosemite Valley—Descriptive

- Yosemite’s High Country

- Hetch Hetchy

- Yosemite’s Giant Sequoias

- “First Families” of Yosemite

- Indian Legends

- The Legend of Tu-tok-a-nu-la and Tis-sa-ack

- The Legend of Hum-mo—The Lost Arrow

- The Legend of Po-ho-no—The Evil Wind

- Pi-wy-ack—Legend of Pi-wy-ack, or Vernal Falls

- Tu-tok-a-na

- Tis-sa-ack

- Upon Beholding Yosemite

- Acknowledgments

- Administration

About the Author

See biography in introduction to Yosemite Tales and Trails, also by Katherine Ames Taylor.

Bibliographical Information

Katherine Ames Taylor (1895-1979), Lights and Shadows of Yosemite: Being a Collection of Favorite Yosemite Views, Together with a Brief Account of Its History and Legends, for Those Who Want to Know and Enjoy Yosemite More (San Francisco: H. S. Crocker Co., 1926) 87 p., Ill. 22 cm. Bound in brown cloth-covered boards with black lettering on cover and spine. Copyright 1926 by Katherine Ames Taylor. No copyright renewal. LCCN 26014774. Library of Congress call number F868.Y6 T2.

Contains photographs by Ansel Adams, De Cou, Harry Best, Charles M. Hiller, James V. Lloyd, Arthur C. Pillsbury, George E. Stone, Frank J. Taylor (author’s husband), Alex Wiederseder, Camp Curry Studio, and City of San Francisco.

Converted to HTML by Dan Anderson, December 2007, from a copy at San Diego Public Library. These files may be used for any non-commercial purpose, provided this notice is left intact.
—Dan Anderson, www.yosemite.ca.us

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PHOTO BY CAMP CURRY STUDIO
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The gates of Yosemite Valley, El Capitan towering 3,604 feet above the Valley, on the left; Bridal Veil Falls on the right

Lights and Shadows of Yosemite

BEING A COLLECTION OF FAVORITE YOSEMITE VIEWS,
TOGETHER WITH A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF ITS HISTORY
AND LEGENDS, FOR THOSE WHO WANT TO
KNOW AND ENJOY YOSEMITE MORE

BY
KATHERINE AMES TAYLOR

published by
H. S. Crocker Company, Inc.
san francisco

COPYRIGHT, 1926, by
KATHERINE AMES TAYLOR

Lights and Shadows of Yosemite

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page

Foreword

6

Frontispiece Quotation—“The Range of Light”

8

In the Beginning—Origin of Yosemite

9

Early Occupants—The Indians

14

Discovery of Yosemite by the White Men

20

Pioneer Days—Early Travelers

26

Old Landmarks

32

Yosemite Valley—Descriptive

42

The Back Country

44

Hetch Hetchy

50

The Giant Sequoias

52

“First Families” of Yosemite

58

Indian Legends:

Tu-tok-a-nu-la and Tis-sa-ack

64

Hum-mo—The Lost Arrow

68

Po-ho-no—The Evil Wind

72

Pi-wy-ack—Legend of Vernal Falls

74

Tu-tok-a-na

78

Tis-sa-ack

80

Upon Beholding Yosemite

70

Acknowledgments

82

Administration

84

Foreword

There is a dramatic quality about the story of Yosemite which is quite in keeping with its setting. The drama of its amazing creation, its first occupancy by the Indians, its discovery by the white men, its pioneer days and ways, and its rugged Old-Timers, all make it a colossal American pageant.

The setting remains the same, but the scene is ever varied by the shifting lights and shadows. These set the tempo, and whether it is the red man, the pioneer, or the knicker-clad tourist of today who occupies the stage, the picture that lingers in the mind of the lover of Yosemite is the massing of clouds about Half Dome, or the mile-long shadow of El Capitan flung across azalea-scented meadows, or the changing colors on the walls beside Yosemite Falls or other towering cliffs.

The purpose of this book is to quicken again emotions that were stirred by such pictures in the heart of every visitor, by presentation of the outstanding views of Yosemite; since, without an occasional jogging, memory pictures alone blur and become indistinct with time. And just as so many people who make a tour of the Valley elect to have a guide to furnish the facts and the fancies, so is a text appended to the illustrations.

If this book serves, then, to recapture even for a moment the sparkle of the sun-sifted spray of the Bridal Veil, or the evening shadows and tints on Half Dome, or if it re-creates for a moment the tourist days of the Yosemite of our mothers, in the era of the stage coach, as contrasted with the present, with its automobile roads to the very feet of the glaciers, it will have fulfilled its mission.

—The Author

PHOTO BY GEO. E. STONE
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Yosemite Falls, the upper falls 1,430 feet in height, the lower falls 320 feet. The top of the falls is 2,561 feet above Yosemite Valley

The Range of Light

“. . . then it seemed to me that the Sierra should be called, not the Nevada, or Snowy Range, but the Range of Light. And after ten years of wandering and wondering in the heart of it, rejoicing in its glorious floods of light, the white beams of the morning streaming through the passes, the noonday radiance on the crystal rocks, the flush of the alpenglow and the irised spray of the countless waterfalls, it still seems, above all others, the Range of Light.”

—John Muir, in “The Yosemite.”

In the Beginning

All of the drama of Yosemite, from its first occupancy by the Indians to the present day, is but an epilogue to that more stupendous drama, its creation. All that has happened since the birth of Half Dome and El Capitan are but the crowding incidents in a moment’s dream. What happened during the long night while the world slept? For though the massive cliffs of Yosemite Valley seem old as Time itself, geologists assure us that they are but Time’s great-great-grandchildren.

Bewilderingly long ago, millions of years, some terrific disturbance beneath the earth’s crust caused it to break and to tilt up, on its eastern edge, a great hummock of granite blocks, four hundred miles long and eighty miles wide. This was to be known, in our time, as the Sierra Nevada Range. Its eastern front, where it was heaved out of the earth, presented a steep and somewhat terraced front. Its western side was but slightly elevated, its slope gentle and gradual but sufficiently inclined to give new impetus to the transverse streams which had been flowing in diverse directions. Their course was now determined, and their combined flow began cutting canyons in the western slope of this new mountain range. One of the larger of these streams became known as the Merced River. The valley it slowly fashioned later was called the Yosemite. For numberless centuries this erosion continued until the canyon of the Merced River broadened into a shallow valley, and the Merced River slowed down and meandered lazily along its floor.

Mother Nature roused it into action again with another mighty heave, which raised the Sierra Nevada a thousand or so feet higher on its eastern edge. The process of canyon cutting recommenced for the Merced, and by the time it had lost its renewed velocity there came the third, and final, uplift, greater than all the others. This formed a Yosemite Valley not as wide, nor as deep, nor as sheer-walled as we know it now, but otherwise it was structurally about the same.

Finally, the Great Sculptor took up his frozen tools, manipulating glaciers to carve and polish to its final perfection this Yosemite Valley. Snows which had accumulated for hundreds of years packed down on the summits of these mountains until they formed solid blocks of ice. These grew and extended, sending out tongues of flowing ice into all its canyons and, eventually, forming a continuous sheet of ice which covered all the mountains and overflowed its sides.

Thus there were the ice-filled canyons of Tenaya, Merced, and Illilouette. Those three glaciers met and converged at the upper end of Yosemite Valley, to pack the canyon with their thousands of tons of grinding ice and embedded rock, as they flowed slowly down to a point just below El Capitan. Here, as the climate turned warmer, they deposited their moraine, or debris, and slowly they receded to their fountain heads in the high Sierras, damming the outlet of the canyon, leaving Yosemite drowned in a lake hundreds of feet deep. Little by little the sand and pulverized rock of the melting glaciers was deposited in this, until the lake was filled, and the present floor of the valley was formed, remarkable for its flatness, smoothness, and general absence of rock deposits.

But this was the least of the work of the glaciers. As they came and went, and while they remained, they so ground and carved the walls and floor of the valley, by the incalculable weight of the ice, and the ceaseless movement of the great blocks of rock already embedded in them, that they deepened the gorge, and changed the shape of the whole from that of a V to that of a U. With fine skill they fashioned of this rugged, humpy mountain a splendor of pinnacles, spires, domes, and arches which attracts admirers to it from the four corners of the earth

The particular and outstanding features of the Valley were determined largely by their rock structure. Where there were vertical fissures, or cleavage joints, in the walls, great slabs of granite were more easily plucked out, widening the canyon in such places, and forming the sheer, straight cliffs so characteristic of Yosemite. The quality of the rock, too, its density and its comparative hardness or softness, were determining factors in this sculpturing. Solid, only slightly fissured masses of granite, such as El Capitan, Sentinel Rock,

PHOTO BY BEST STUDIO
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The Three Brothers, the tallest of which is Eagle Peak, 7,773 feet high, or 3,813 feet above Yosemite Valley

and the Three Brothers, were able to withstand this powerful abrasion and grinding, and were etched out against the skyline by the removal of the less resistant rocks around them.

The domes and the spires and the arches of Yosemite owe their configuration and escape from glacial plucking to their curved joints. These were more resistant than the straight or intersecting joints. Many such hummocks have been rounded into domes by the heaving action of freezing water in the joint cracks, and to the shaling off of thick layers of rock, like the skin of an onion, in the natural process of expansion and contraction caused by alternate heat and cold. Most of the smaller domes, while not directly caused by glaciers, have been beautifully polished by them. Half Dome, most remarkable of all the domes, owes its configuration to the intersection of two systems of joints; one straight, the other curved. This has enabled it to withstand, through the eons, upheaval, earthquake, glaciers, and stream erosion. When Half Dome falls, probably the curtain will have gone down forever on this great stage of Yosemite, set in the course of the millions of years, and made ready for its human actors who were eventually to enact their little dramas there.

PHOTO BY A. C. PILLSBURY
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Half Dome, as seen from Glacier Point, in the winter season when snows blanket the Sierras

Early Occupants of Yosemite

The Indians

Out of the forest, and onto the Yosemite stage, step the first actors, the Indians. Not knowing a Yosemite Valley existed, there at their feet they beheld for the first time this unbelievable valley, with its sheer, sculptured cliffs of granite, its gleaming river and broad meadows, its forests and its snow-capped domes. What a moment in human history!

And yet, this stupendous scenery which was to stir so greatly the souls of the white men who came later, probably made small impression upon them. With a grunt or two, no doubt, signifying “good, safe, resting spot,” these first claim-stakers descended, and soon the smoke from many round houses was wreathing upward, declaring the first human occupancy of Yosemite Valley, which the Indians knew as Ahwahnee—“deep, grassy valley.”

Here this tribe of Indians lived and flourished for many generations. Then came a famine, and the black sickness, which all but exterminated these people. Those few who survived, believing the Great Spirit to have visited his wrath upon them, fled, many never to return. They scattered throughout California and Nevada, many of them attaching themselves to the Mono and Pai-ute tribes.

The father of Chief Tenaya was one of these Ahwahneechees who fled from Yosemite. He married a Mono maiden of the tribe with whom he sought refuge. When young Tenaya grew to manhood, he was persuaded by the urgings of an aged medicine man of his father’s tribe to gather together the descendants of the Ahwahneechees and to return with them to their former home. The old patriarch prophesied that as long as Tenaya retained possession of Ahwahnee, his band would increase in numbers and become powerful. If he befriended those who sought his protection, no other tribe would come to the valley to make war upon him or attempt to drive him from it. Furthermore, the old counselor warned him against the horsemen of the lowlands, the early Spanish Californians, and declared that should they enter Ahwahnee his tribe would soon

PHOTO BY F. J. TAYLOR
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Yosemite Indians are building in Yosemite a new village in replica of those of their forefathers

become scattered and destroyed, or his people taken captive, and he himself would be the last chief in Ahwahnee. This prophecy was always in Tenaya’s mind, and is said to have actuated his wars upon the white men when they encroached upon his mountain home.

Tenaya’s band, augmented by refugees and outcasts from the other tribes, became known as the Yosemites, signifying “Grizzly Bears.” There are several explanations of the choice of this name. One legend relates that a warrior of this tribe, armed only with the dead limb of a tree, in a surprise encounter fought and killed a grizzly bear. Dragging himself back to the village, bleeding and exhausted, he told of his battle. Henceforth, he was deferentially referred to as Yosemite, Killer of the Grizzly Bear. The name was handed down to his descendants, and was finally adopted by the tribe. The more likely explanation is, however, that at that time this region abounded in grizzly bears, and the likeness between the bear and his fierce and ruthless Indian hunter suggested itself to the less warlike tribes, who referred to the Awahneechees somewhat in derision as the Yosemites, or Grizzlies.

Came the gold rush of ’49 and ’50, and the stampede of the miners to the slopes of the Sierra Nevada. Quite naturally the Indians resented this overrunning of their peaceful valleys, the destruction of their chief staple of diet, the acorns, by the hogs and donkeys of the white men, the plowing under of great fields of clover and tender grasses to make way for the white men’s crops. Friction resulted. The Indians evened up scores by stealing the cattle and horses of the intruders, and in many instances they plundered, burned, and murdered, in their efforts to drive the white men out.

There followed the Indian wars of 1851, at which time the Indians were effectually hunted out and captured by the United States volunteer troops, and brought down from their mountains into the reservations established for them by the Government. Tenaya and his band resisted to the last, but they too were finally subdued and brought in to the reservation near Fresno. They were later paroled and allowed to go back to their mountains, upon the solemn agreement with old Chief Tenaya not to molest the white men further.

PHOTO BY J. V. LLOYD
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Indian Field Day, when all the Indians around Yosemite gather in the Valley for rodeo sports

Tenaya kept to his agreement scrupulously enough, but five of his band broke faith, robbing and killing two prospectors who had made their way into Yosemite Valley in 1852.

The Government exacted retribution for this, and again sent troops into the Valley. While the five self-confessed murderers were taken, and summarily shot, Chief Tenaya and his people escaped over the mountains and took refuge with the Monos.

After an extended stay with their friendly and hospitable neighbors, they returned once more to Ahwahnee. But with them returned some of their hosts’ horses, and for this gross breach of etiquette, the Monos, in righteous wrath, promptly returned the Ahwahneechees’ call, in head feathers and war paint. Finding their erstwhile guests stuffed and stupid with feasting on the stolen horses, the Monos took their revenge, wiping out all but a handful of the Yosemite tribe.

One could have wished a more glorious end to so dramatic a career as old Chief Tenaya’s, but the pitiless fact is that here in his beloved Ahwahnee he met his death by a rock hurled by an incensed Mono neighbor.

Today there are still to be found in Yosemite descendants of this fearless band that once roamed and owned the Valley. But each year sees their number decreased. Encouraged by the Government which once drove their forefathers out, they are rebuilding a village on the very site they occupied when discovered by the Mariposa Battalion on its first entry into the Valley. Until recently, their acorn caches were still standing in the Valley, and their hollowed stones for grinding acorns are yet to be found. Each year they hold here their annual Indian Field Day, at which time the Mono Indians from Nevada, and Indians from the plains below, gather in Yosemite and participate in contests of various kinds, bringing with them their baskets and beadwork, their papooses and their bobbed-hair flapper Pocahontases.

PHOTO BY CHAS. M. HILLER
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Leevining Canyon, on the Tioga Road, is the land of magnificent distances

Discovery of Yosemite by the White Men

Military business, and not luck, led to the discovery of Yosemite Valley by white men.

In 1851 the Mariposa Battalion was organized, with Major James D. Savage in command, for a punitive expedition into the mountains back of Fresno against Chief Tenaya and his stubborn band of Yosemite Indians, who had been killing miners and pillaging their supplies and stores in the placer mining region west of Yosemite. Tenaya defied the Government’s demands to come down into the reservations provided for the Indians.

It was on a March afternoon in 1851 that this small band of men looked down from Inspiration Point, on the old Indian trail, and saw for the first time what John Muir so justly calls “the Incomparable Valley.” It had been a long and hazardous journey, with the rather terrifying Unknown ahead of them, and it is quite likely that the majority of those rugged, practical-minded men gave a nod or two of appreciation, like their predecessors, the Indians, then hastened on down the trail to pitch camp before night fell.

Only Dr. Lafayette H. Bunnell, out of that pioneer group, was deeply impressed by the beauty and wonder which stretched before them. He left the trail and wallowed through snow to the edge of the cliff so that he might enjoy more fully the view before him. Lost in his emotions, he was recalled to reality by the voice of Major Savage, who exhorted him to come out of his dream before he lost his scalp to some inhospitable Indian. And when, in a burst of eloquence, he tried to communicate some of his sensations to the Major, he was cut short good-humoredly with a “Hold up, Doc! You are soaring too high for me. This is rough riding; we had better mind this devilish trail, or we shall go soaring over some of these slippery rocks.”

But after camp had been pitched, in the shelter of a great rock beside the Merced River, commanding a view of El Capitan across the water, and a hearty meal had been consumed, the men gathered about the roaring camp fires in a more appreciative mood. Dr.

PHOTO BY GEO. E. STONE
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Yosemite Valley, frosted with snow as seen in winter from Artist Point, the view first seen by the discoverers

Bunnell was still absorbed in the wonders of his surroundings, and it was he who suggested that the name of Yosemite be given the valley, after the Indians who had made it their home for so many years. And that night, by a unanimous vote, the valley was so baptized, with El Capitan as a silent witness.

Early the next morning the Mariposa Battalion began an exploration of the valley in the pursuit of the Indians. At the foot of El Capitan they found the first Indian camp, within hailing distance and spying distance of the first white men’s camp in the valley, with indications that it had been occupied the night before by the Indians. At the mouth of Indian Canyon, site of the present-day Indian Village, a second camp was found, a third beneath the Royal Arches, and a fourth at the base of Half Dome at the entrance to Tenaya Canyon. All evidence pointed to a hasty and recent flight, while in nearly every camp were found articles stolen from miners.

But the only Indian captured was a decrepit squaw, who had been unable to scramble up the rocks with her kinsmen. After burning the caches of acorns and stored foods, in the hopes of starving the Indians out of the mountains, the Mariposa Battalion made camp a second night, preparing to return to the lowlands the following day.

When the various scouting parties of the expedition compared notes on the scenic splendors of this Indian stronghold, the outstanding feature in the minds of the majority, after their many forced fordings of the Merced River, seems to have been that there was very much water in the valley, and very cold water! None of them, with the possible exception of Dr. Bunnell, felt the urge to stay and pitch a pleasure camp there. That second night, about their camp fire, various estimates were made of the height of El Capitan. They ranged anywhere from the simple-minded guess of 400 feet to the absurdity suggested by a much-traveled foreigner, and sustained by Dr. Bunnell, that it might be as much as 1500 feet! Which is, in fact, less than half of its actual height of 3600 feet!

Such was the first visit of white men to Yosemite to be followed in May by a second expedition of volunteers, under Captain Boling,

PHOTO BY GEO. E. STONE
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Nevada Falls plunges 594 feet with an ever changing series of comet-like sprays

one which succeeded in capturing and bringing into the reservation Tenaya and his followers.

In 1925 a bronze plaque was erected on the site of the first white man’s camp in Yosemite by the California State Medical Association to the memory of Dr. Bunnell of that pioneer party. Dr. Bunnell visited the Valley a number of times and wrote a book which is the best authority for incidents surrounding the discovery of Yosemite and for its early history. A huge overhanging rock, close to the bank of the Merced River, opposite El Capitan, was the site of this camp. It is blackened from the smoke of many camp fires since that time and suggests poignantly the blaze about which the Mariposa Battalion gathered, while just across the river flickered the protected fire of the hostile and stealthy Indians.

PHOTO BY ANSEL ADAMS
[click to enlarge]
Royal Archer, in Yosemite Valley, with North Dome, 7,531 feet high in the background

Pioneer Days in the Yosemite

Sight-Seeing in Yosemite began in 1855, six years after the discovery of gold in California. H. M. Hutchings, Thomas Ayers, Walter Millard, and Alexander Stair organized the first tourist party to go into this wilderness of the Indians and the grizzly bears. It was a three days’ trip on horseback, each way, over an indistinct and all but impassable trail. Thanks to the aid of two Indian guides they reached the Valley safely, and for five days, as Hutchings puts it, they luxuriated in a “scenic banquet.” Picture them, a poet, an artist, and two ardent nature lovers, steeping themselves in all this magnificence, unknown almost to the world! The enthusiastic reports of this trip did much to stimulate interest in the Valley; Hutchings broadcasting with his articles and Ayers with the first pictures of Yosemite Falls, which were, later, to become even more widely photographed than the Prince of Wales. As a result of this early publicity, two other intrepid parties ventured in before the year was out.

These were the drum majors leading that long, long procession of tourists which has been trekking to Yosemite ever since. The following year the first women entered the Valley, with true pioneer spirit, and by so doing allayed the fear as to Indians and grizzlies, and thereby stimulated travel considerably!

The Valley was not crowded in those earliest years. Records show that about twenty or thirty visitors was the annual average for that first ten years. Only the hardiest undertook the trip. But in 1864 Congress turned Yosemite over to California for a State Park, and the tourist record jumped to 147. From that time on travel increased by fifty or a hundred each year, until, in 1875, three thousand visitors registered in the Park. According to Dr. Bunnell, nine tenths of them came either from Europe or the Atlantic Coast. Californians were too busy in those days creating their own miracles to view nature’s.

Long before there were wagon roads, foot and horse trails had to be blazed, and this involved considerable expense and labor, as well

PHOTO BY DE COU
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Overhanging Rock, at Glacier Point, from which it is a sheer drop of 3,200 feet to Camp Curry in Yosemite Valley

as financial risk. The first of these trails was built in 1857 by the Mann brothers, keepers of a livery stable near Wawona. As a toll trail it did not pay, and was soon sold to the county of Mariposa and made free. Travel to Yosemite was difficult enough at that time, involving a stage ride of ninety-two miles over hot and dusty roads in a swaying coach, and then a journey of sixty miles more on horseback, over steep, treacherous, and breath-taking trails.

In 1858, a year after the completion of the Wawona trail, the Coulterville trail on the north side of the Valley was finished, so that visitors might now enter by one road and leave by the other. Visitors, then, did not return to the Valley season after season, as they now do. One trip sufficed for a lifetime, and it was well to see as much of the country as possible at that time.

It was 1874, nineteen years after the first tourist party made its visit, before a wagon road into the Valley was completed. This ushered in the era of the stagecoach, and a journey to Yosemite became almost de luxe then! This first wagon road, the old Coulterville Road, was put through primarily to accommodate goldseekers, who were looking in the High Sierras for the Mother lode, the source of all the gold nuggets and dust that streams had washed down into the placer mining country. The following year, the Wawona Road was extended into Yosemite Valley from the south side, and this road, now much improved, is the present Wawona automobile road. The Big Oak Flat Road, traversing the Bret Harte country, and the first free wagon road from the edge of the Park to the floor of the Valley, was completed in 1874, shortly after the Coulterville Road was opened.

The days of the stagecoach! What pictures and emotions the phrase conjures up! Stagecoaches, gold-diggers, bandits, conviviality, and always and ever the jolting and swaying, the heat and the dust, or the thrilling fording of rivers at high water when the horses had all but to swim! Yet those were the days for which the Old-Timers still sigh!

Until the Horseshoe Route stage line was established, the trip from Stockton took two, and sometimes three, days. With the

PHOTO BY A. WIEDERSEDER
[click to enlarge]
Sentinel Rock, guardian over Yosemite Valley, resembles a Cathedral built upon a mountain

coming of the Cannonball Express, via the Horseshoe Route, this time was reduced to a day, albeit a long one. This was made possible by changing horses at intervals of ten miles or less along the whole route, which is now followed by the Horseshoe auto stages. Many of these old relay posts are still pointed out to the tourists, and are popular camping spots for automobilists.

Tales are told of the rollicking speed at which these stagecoaches sometimes traveled over the then perilous roads. The Black Devil’s Turn was a particularly perilous bend, so named for the negro driver who generally managed to take it on two wheels, giving his passengers an unbilled extra thrill. Holdups were all too common occurrences along this road in those days, when both tourists and miners might be traveling with wealth on their persons. Even forest fires failed to stop the Cannonball Express, according to one story, which relates how the driver whipped his steeds, as he came to a burning forest at a point where turning around on the narrow road was impossible, and emerged to find the back of his stagecoach smoldering. No, travel today is not what it used to be!

The wonder and delight caused by the construction of these roads into Yosemite was quite transcended, in 1907, by the completion of the Yosemite Valley Railway to its terminal at El Portal, from which point horse-drawn stages took passengers into the Valley proper. Automobiles were admitted to the National Parks in 1915. That act has done more than anything else to increase travel to Yosemite. The beautiful and spectacular Tioga Road, begun in the days of the gold rush and never completed, was rehabilitated in 1915, largely through the efforts and generosity of Stephen T. Mather, Director of the National Park Service. He and some friends bought the private mining road to which the Government could not get claim, and presented it to the people of the United States, and in so doing opened to automobile travel all the grandeur of the higher Yosemite country.

PHOTO BY BEST STUDIO
[click to enlarge]
Arched Rocks, near the entrance of Yosemite Valley on the El Portal Road

Old Yosemite Landmarks

Even in its earliest days, business enterprise was great in Yosemite Valley. Foreseeing another “gold rush” in California, in the tourists certain to flock to Yosemite, two men built inns in the wilderness less than three years after Hutchings’ first trip there. True, the first of these was a saloon, built in the fall of the year of 1856, and opened the next spring to accommodate that class of visitors who must have their whisky and gambling even in the shadow of El Capitan. The following year it was fitted up and used as a restaurant, as it became evident that it was as necessary to eat as to drink, while in Yosemite. Several years later it was enlarged and was known as Black’s Hotel, where John Muir lived many years later after his rupture with Hutchings.

The second of these inns was to become more widely known. It was primarily a blue canvas building erected by a Mr. Beardsly, and later torn down to make way for a wooden structure, which H. M. Hutchings bought. After a few years this became one of the famous hostelries of Yosemite, as distinct a Yosemite landmark of its day as the Sentinel Hotel, Yosemite Lodge, and Camp Curry were to become later. It was called Hutchings’ House and achieved its distinction largely through the personality of its genial host. Certainly it had not many material comforts to recommend it. Owing to its flimsy construction and lack of partitions, at first, the men were all herded downstairs and the women upstairs. Later, paper partitions were erected between rooms, curtains hung for doors, and husbands and wives were permitted to occupy the same apartment. The whisper which was heard around the world would have been quite deafening there, and the shadows on the paper walls must have made lively pantomimes. Nevertheless, these little discomforts were taken good-naturedly by the guests, for the most part, and laughed off as the shortcomings of a poetic host, who would recite poetry as he fetched the morning hot cakes.

A part of the old Hutchings House still stands, on the premises of the Sentinel Hotel, and is known today as Cedar Cottage, because

PHOTO BY GEO. E. STONE
[click to enlarge]
Cedar Cottage, in Old Yosemite Village, the first permanent structure in Yosemite, is known for its Big Tree Room

of the huge cedar tree growing through one of the rooms. This, alone, of all the early landmarks will be retained in the destruction of the Old Yosemite Village, which must make way for the new.

Leidig’s Hotel, at the foot of Sentinel Rock, was another favorite inn of its day. The old Stoneman House, in the meadows of the upper part of the Valley, was the most pretentious of them all until it was destroyed by fire. Perhaps one of the most welcome but financially least successful was Snow’s House, which flourished for a few years at the foot of Nevada Falls. All were crude enough, according to report, yet in all a spirit of hospitality and true bonhomie prevailed.

The problem of transporting people into the Valley in those early days was commensurate only with the problem of feeding and sheltering them while they were there. That was no mean undertaking, considering the inaccessibility of supplies. These earlier hotels, then, were comparable, no doubt, to the rude but ample accommodations to be found today in the upper reaches of Yosemite Park, at the Hikers’ Camps at Merced, Booth, and Tenaya Lakes. Shelter, food, beds, and blankets were all that could be provided for the tourist in those days.

One of the show places in the Park was John Smith’s Cosmopolitan House. Its exterior was simple enough, but its interior contained baths! Real bathtubs, with hot and cold water! It also comprised a barber shop, a billiards and pool hall, as well as a reading and writing room. It was the popular rendezvous of the Valley, and in its huge old registry book, divided according to States, are to be found many autographs of people famed in America and abroad. To achieve this oasis on the heights, John Smith, the popular proprietor, had had the foresight and the energy to pack in on mule back, for a distance of fifty miles, all the furnishings for his hotel. These included the bathtubs, full-length mirrors, elaborate glass goblets, and an amazing array of other articles. Such a nature as his might have realized that dream of George Anderson’s had he lived a little longer, a hotel on the shoulder of Half Dome! As this is written, his building still stands in the old Yosemite Village, it being used now

PHOTO BY ANSEL ADAMS
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Le Conte Memorial Lodge, built by the Sierra Club, in Yosemite Valley, to preserve lore of the park

as offices for the Yosemite Park and Curry Company, while in the front the Yosemite barber still plies his trade, and above the old placard “Shave and Haircut” is the new one, “Hair correctly bobbed here.” So the old order changeth.

The Sentinel Hotel, of all the old landmarks, is probably the best known and loved by this generation. Outgrown by the changing times, on the score of sentiment it will be missed by many when torn down. Every year guests come into the Valley and want to stop again at the Sentinel Hotel, where they stopped ten, twenty, even forty years ago.

When the State of California re-ceded Yosemite to the United States Government in 1890 to become a National Park, a barracks was erected on the site of the present Lodge to care for the troops who patrolled the Park prior to the creation of the National Park Service. National Parks were at first administered by the War Department. With the recall of the soldiers, and the establishment of the National Park ranger service, the barracks was converted into another summer camp, which was purchased by the Yosemite National Park Company and rebuilt as the present Yosemite Lodge.

At the other end of the Valley, just below Glacier Point, lies Camp Curry, synonymous to many with Yosemite Valley itself. Certainly it is unique among the camps of its kind in America, if not in the world. In 1899 David A. Curry and his wife opened their first camp there, pitching seven tents about a central camp fire, to entertain a party of school-teachers. When the season closed the number of tents had increased to twenty-three and 290 guests had been entertained. As in the earlier hotels of Yosemite, Mr. and Mrs. Curry were true host and hostess to their guests, even when their number grew to such dimensions that it was impossible to know them personally. It was Mr. Curry who originated that most famous of all Yosemite customs, the evening fire-fall from Glacier Point, and his “stentor” call of farewell to the departing guests, and the sentiment it evoked, will long live in tradition.

James C. Lamon was first permanent settler in Yosemite. He is interesting chiefly because he belonged to that great Order of Firsts.

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Tenaya Lake, surrounded by granite domes, carved and polished by glaciers

Unlike the many who came to Yosemite to look, he came to live, and his was the first chimney smoke, of red man or white, to circle upward just as steadily through the snowstorms as through the sunshine. He built his cabin in 1859 near the present site of Camp Curry. That first winter he lived in the Valley utterly alone, without even the companionship of a dog, watched over only by El Capitan and Half Dome. In the face of discouragements from his friends, he set out a garden and an orchard which they claimed could never flourish in that climate. That apple orchard, abloom in the springtime, in its rare setting of majestic cliffs and foaming waterfalls, is still one of the sights of the Valley. The visitor was always sure of a welcome. If the proprietor was not at home to sell his fruit, the visitor was allowed to pick and eat, in his garden, but not to carry away, depositing on his window a quarter or a half-dollar in silver.

Lamon lived in the Valley for fourteen years, and when he died there, he was laid to rest in the little Yosemite cemetery, now in the good-fellowship of Galen Clark, H. M. Hutchings, and other Yosemite pioneers.

Just across the meadows from the Sentinel Hotel, commanding a fine view of Yosemite Falls, is a stone bench, a memorial to Galen Clark. He is sometimes referred to as The Grand Old Man of the Valley. In 1857 Galen Clark first built his log cabin at Wawona, then known as Clark’s Station. He went there, with a serious tubercular infection of the lungs, in the hope of prolonging his life. He succeeded quite admirably in this, living to the vigorous old age of ninety-six.

At ninety years of age he turned author and wrote three authoritative books about Yosemite, which undoubtedly he loved and knew better than anyone else of his time. An author at ninety is alone a unique claim to fame, but Galen Clark has other claims.

Though not the actual discoverer of the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees, he is certainly responsible for making them known to the world. He made the trail from Wawona to the grove and conducted to the Big Trees many hundreds of people. The Big Trees were one of the absorbing elements in his life. For fourteen years he was the

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Down the Wawona Road into Yosemite when the trees display their winter finery

first Guardian of Yosemite Valley, and for twenty-four years he served as a member of the Board of Commissioners which guarded its wonders. He lived for fifty years in the Valley of Wawona, spending twenty summers in Yosemite Valley, and he lies now in the plot he selected in the Yosemite cemetery, shaded by the Sequoia seedlings he himself planted there twenty years before he was laid to rest beneath them. Neither rude nor crude, he was a “very perfect gentle knight” of the High Sierras.

The Bard of Yosemite was John Muir. Just as John Muir made Yosemite his, so does Yosemite claim John Muir for her own. He, more than any other, typifies the spirit of Yosemite. There is something about his physical endurance and outdoor ruggedness which suggests the far-flung peaks of the High Sierras; something in his mental energy and crystal clearness which suggests his beloved Yosemite Falls; and something in his spiritual beauty and tenderness which suggests the flower-strewn, cloud-shadowed meadows of Yosemite. Impossible it is even to think of him except in the terms of beauty he lived in and loved so well.

He first came to Yosemite in 1868 for a brief visit. After that he returned again and again to this chosen spot of his, making it a base for further excursions in the surrounding country. Untiringly and with the keenest joy and enthusiasm he gave the greater part of his life to intensive and fruitful study of this ‘’great page of mountain manuscript.”

It was largely through his efforts that Yosemite became a National Park. As president of the Sierra Club for twenty-two years, and by his writings, studies, and explorations, he did more than any other one man to interest the world in this great out-of-doors.

The former site of the sawmill where he worked for several summers, and the spot near the foot of Yosemite Falls where his cabin stood, are now shrines to all lovers of John Muir. It was here that he and Joseph Le Conte, the geologist, met for the first time, by the bend in the Yosemite stream which Muir deflected so as to flow through one corner of his cabin, that he might better listen to its song.

PHOTO BY GEO. E. STONE
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Nevada Falls, as seen from the Trail, through a frame of oaks, pines and maples

Yosemite Valley—Descriptive

Yosemite Valley According to geologists, Yosemite Valley is nearly in the center of the State of California, north and south, and in the middle of the Sierra, which is seventy miles wide at this point. It is described in Government documents as being a “cleft, or gorge” in the Sierra range, which suggests, erroneously, some deep canyon. Valley, on the other hand, conjures up an image of flatness, broad meadows, and meandering streams. As a matter of fact, Yosemite is a rare combination of both.

The floor of the Valley, three thousand feet below its rim, runs in an easterly and westerly direction, and is seven miles long and about a mile across at its widest point. It alternates flowery meadows, through which the Merced River winds, with fragrant groves of pines, firs, spruces, and incense cedars. On all sides sheer granite cliffs rise almost perpendicularly to a height of from 2500 to 5000 feet. These form at times sheer shafts of granite, as in the Sentinel Rock, and Cathedral group; at others they round into vast domes, or group themselves in gigantic piles of sculpturing. Over their sides appear glistening ribbons of cascades or the thundering falls of Yosemite, Bridal Veil, Vernal, and Nevada.

The wonder of Yosemite does not lie in its bewildering heights and overpowering distances, but in its amazing harmony of magnitude and fragile beauty. Single features so blend into the magnificent whole that it takes days to appreciate it all. Waterfalls five hundred to one or two thousand feet high are so subordinated to the mighty cliffs over which they pour that their own significance is blurred. Mighty trees fringe these walls like waving grain. Broad meadows at their feet appear but narrow strips of lawn.

“Things frail and fleeting and types of endurance meet here and blend into countless forms, as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.”

PHOTO BY GEO. E. STONE
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Yosemite Valley, as seen from Inspiration Point on the Wawona Road

Yosemite’s High Country

Yosemite National Park covers an area of 1124 square miles, almost the size of the State of Rhode Island. Counting in the acres on the perpendicular surfaces of its cliffs, Yosemite is probably larger than Rhode Island.

Of this vast area Yosemite Valley comprises but eight square miles, or about three fourths of one per cent of Yosemite National Park. Yet the visitors who know Yosemite’s back country are few in number compared to those who picture Yosemite merely as the Valley only.

Occasionally one hears the remark that Yosemite is becoming overcrowded with visitors. Those who make that complaint do not know the magnificent miles of Yosemite’s majestic back country, above the 6000-foot level, where mountain crests, canyons, meadows, lakes, streams, glaciers, minarets, and forests are piled side by side in reckless extravagance. As some one has aptly said, “Time and Nature sculptured with a lavish hand when Yosemite’s high country was carved.”

Tuolumne Meadows lies but an easy day’s trip, by automobile, by horseback, or on foot, from the floor of Yosemite Valley, and is the most central base for the many High Sierra trips. Once a glacial lake, the Meadows lie at the junction of Dana and Lyell Forks of the Tuolumne River, at an elevation of from 8500 to 9000 feet above sea level. They are approximately ten miles long and two miles wide, and are surrounded by the highest of the Sierra peaks in this part of the range, most of them perpetually snow-crowned. Conness, Dana, Mammoth, Lyell, and McClure peaks rise on the north and the east, the Cathedral Range on the south, while Fairview Dome stands sentinel at the lower end of the Meadows. Mount Hoffman, a particular favorite, remains aloof from its brother peaks, and lies to the west, not far from Tenaya Lake. On the east from Tuolumne Meadows, about an equal distance from Hetch Hetchy on the west, lies Mono Lake, of volcanic origin. To the north of Tuolumne lie Matterhorn Canyon and Benson Pass to lure those seeking greater

PHOTO BY F. J. TAYLOR
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Along the trail as it winds past peaks, forests, meadows, lakes, streams and rocky cliffs, to Merced Lake

seclusion. Here is an enormous area of lakes and valleys and woods which is seldom visited except by rangers. It is an unspoiled wilderness which will delight all those who hold that the mountains are too overrun by human kind to be enjoyable any longer. Here one can be as exclusive and as uncivilized as even the most primitive man could desire!

From the summit of Mount Dana one gets the finest summary of the scenery of the high country. From here one has a complete circle or “360 degrees of pure scenery,” as J. Smeaton Chase has it. Remnants of living glaciers can be seen, countless mountain lakes, or tarns, stretches of green forests, and shining granite domes. From here one can sample at one’s leisure the diverse types of scenery at hand, and marvel, as in Yosemite Valley, at the blending of the austere but magnificent with the beautiful and the picturesque.

Then contrast this extensive view with that more intimate, but no less amazing, scenery of the Tuolumne Canyon. Narrow, and with walls a mile high, it is one of the deepest and widest glacial-carved canyons in the world. Along its rocky floor the Tuolumne River swirls and cascades, at times striking a shelf formation of rock, which hurls its water twenty feet in the air, a solid arch of water, spanning fifty feet or more, forming the famous Waterwheel Falls of the Tuolumne. These will, in time, be as world-known and as eagerly seen as the Yosemite Valley itself. Throughout this country are maintained the High Sierra camps, at easy hiking or horseback-riding distances, furnishing food and shelter at cost, and relieving the mountain vacationist of the necessity of carrying his pack.

If, as John Muir says, you are so unfortunate as to be “time-poor,” and unable to take these back-country trips, there still remains one of the rarest consolations of all, an overnight trip to Glacier Point. This may be reached either on foot, by pack animal, or by automobile, and should be the climax to every first corner’s visit to Yosemite. It is a panorama never to be forgotten; a panorama of domes, pinnacles, waterfalls, and peak upon peak of the scalloped crest of the Sierras.

Directly below you, almost a mile, lies the Valley from which you have come, an animated, toylike settlement. Automobiles

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Banner Peak, 12,957 feet high, with Thousand Island Lake nestling at its base

dart about like tiny insects, the Merced River is but a silver trickle from an overturned goblet. But the sheer and impressive cliffs! They rise straight up from the floor of that Valley to the very soles of your shoes, some 3254 feet above it! Opposite you, across the Merced Canyon, Half Dome looms, mightier than ever at this close range, rosy and mystic in the sunset glow.

Everywhere is there a sense of space, and strength, and power, in the face of which all that is cramped and human seems quietly to relax and expand. Instinctively you draw a deep breath as you recall these lines:

“I inhale great draughts of space,
And the East and the West are mine,
And the North and the South are mine.”

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The rim of Half Dome, from which one can look down 4,892 feet to the floor of Yosemite Valley

Hetch Hetchy

Nature, as well as history, repeats itself. The Hetch Hetchy Valley, approximately thirty miles north from Yosemite Valley, was at one time considered a small reproduction of the greater Yosemite. There was a distinctly marked family resemblance in its topographical features. But all hope that this little Yosemite would grow up to become a greater Yosemite was drowned when the valley was inundated with water in 1923 in the creation of a reservoir as an auxiliary water supply for the city of San Francisco. And therein lies a long tale of a bitter fight between the idealists who fought to retain the valley in its original virgin beauty, and the materialists who succeeded in converting it into a man-made lake.

Hetch Hetchy, the valley of the Tuolumne River, is now an artificial lake, stretching back seven miles from the 300-foot dam constructed across its lower end. Two very beautiful waterfalls empty into this from its surrounding cliffs, the beauty of which is repeated and emphasized in the reflections in the lake. The cliffs, so similar to those of the Yosemite, rise sheer and unbroken from the surface of the water. At the lower end stands the Kolana Dome, resembling in outline the Liberty Cap of Yosemite. At the upper end, when the spillway is opened, pours a miniature Niagara, hypnotic in its tremendous power and crystal beauty.

The Hetch Hetchy Valley has reverted to type. Once a valley, it was entered and occupied by a glacier, which, receding, left there a beautiful mountain lake, with its tributary waterfalls. In the course of time this lake was filled in and became, once more, a valley. Man, then, took a hand in things and by building a dam reconverted this valley into a lake. History, as well as nature, repeats itself!

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Hetch Hetchy, once a miniature Yosemite, now a man-made mountain lake to store water for San Francisco

Yosemite’s Giant Sequoias

In the deep peace of the solemn old woods stand the Big Trees, the Sequoia gigantea, just as they have stood, many of them, since before the birth of Christ, defying the storms of thousands of years, impervious to the rise and fall of antlike nations, living, growing, blossoming, and germinating again, century upon century. Ageless, raceless, for all time and all peoples, they are a living link between the distant past and the more distant future. Though estimated to be between two and three thousand years old, some of these trees, it is said, may not yet have reached their prime. Yet age is but one phase of their great glory. Coupled with this is their amazing size and rare beauty which make them truly one of the wonders of the world.

Within the boundaries of Yosemite National Park are three of the twenty-six groves of Big Trees. The Tuolumne Grove, about a mile and a half west of Crane Flat on the Big Oak Flat Road, contains forty trees. The Merced Grove, about three miles east of Hazel Green, off the Coulterville Road, has thirty-three trees. The Mariposa Grove, best known of all, four miles south of Wawona, boasts four hundred and ninety mature trees. Among these is the Grizzly Giant tree, fully entitled to its world-wide fame for being the oldest living thing on earth.

The height of the full-grown tree averages from 150 feet to 250 feet, though there are many instances of Big Trees which exceed these figures. The Mark Twain tree in the Mariposa Grove towers 331 feet heavenward, tallest of any of the Big Trees on record. The diameter of the trees, measured four feet from the ground, averages about twenty feet. Their age is a matter of greater speculation, owing to the difficulties of measuring the age of any living tree, the age of a tree being determined by the number of rings in its trunk. A conservative estimate is that the mature trees range anywhere from 1500 years old to 3000, and there is evidence that some few of them may be as old as 5000 years.

Though naturalists say that the genus of this tree was once to be found on three continents, Europe, Asia, North America, during

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The Grizzly Giant, 93 feet around, 204 feet high, monarch of the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees

one of the glacial ages all the species became extinct except the two which still survive in California, and are to be found no place else in the world, the Big Tree, or Sequoia gigantea, of the Sierras, and the Redwood, or Sequoia sempervirens, of the Coast Range.

Sheltered in warm spots and thus spared by the Sierra Nevada glaciers which may have swept forests of the venerable giant sequoias away, the surviving Big Trees are to be found only between 36 and 38 1/2 degrees north latitude, and between 5000 and 7000 feet above sea level. They have a strong family instinct and group closely together, a straggler rarely being found more than a mile from the family circle.

John Muir points out that in every grove of Big Trees running water is to be found. It was generally supposed that the trees grew there on account of water. On the contrary, he points out, the water is there because of the trees. The roots of these immense trees fill the ground, forming a thick sponge which absorbs and holds back the rain and melting snows, only allowing it to seep out and flow gently. Drain off the water, and the trees will remain, but cut off the trees and the water will vanish, so he declared.

There is a perfection and symmetry in the beauty of the Big Trees quite in keeping with their dignified stateliness. No fantastic, wind-blown contours, or picturesquely gnarled branches. Their great trunks rise like fluted columns, free of branches a hundred to a hundred and fifty feet from the ground in the more mature trees. At the age of two or three hundred years, when they have attained a height of from seventy-five to a hundred and twenty-five feet, these lower branches drop from the trunk. Their foliage is densely massed and regular in outline. These trees show no weather side and the branches taper up to the leafy crowns with beautiful precision. The bark of the trunk is reddish brown in color, ridged, and sometimes a foot and a half in thickness. It contains little resin, is very fibrous, and so is not readily inflammable.

Toward the end of the winter the Big Trees bloom. The female flowers are pale green, about three eighths of an inch long, and grow in countless thousands on the ends of the sprays. The male blossoms are pale yellow and grow in even greater profusion.

PHOTO BY GEO. E. STONE
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Galen Clark Cabin and a giant sequoia in the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees

Unlike the rest of the Sierra trees, the Big Trees are not subject to disease, insects, and fungi. They are never sick nor do they show the least signs of decay. Lightning and fire are their greatest enemies, and, within the last century, the axe of man. The tops of many of the oldest trees have been lost repeatedly through lightning, but immediately the branches beneath turn upward and begin the slow race to achieve supremacy and to become the new crown.

A little aloof, then, and lofty, they stand, but what incomparable majesty and grandeur is theirs! Age, size, and beauty are not all. Their most precious gift is the spirit of peace, quiet, and great strength which comes to those who commune with them. Those who come to stare, remain to worship, and to receive the benediction of these High Priests of the Sierras.

PHOTO BY GEO. E. STONE
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The Temple of the Trees, in the Mariposa Grove of Giant Sequoias

“First Families” of Yosemite

After all, the Yosemite Indians were but newcomers to the Valley as compared to those earlier inhabitants, the black and the grizzly bears, the four species of deer, the mountain lion and the wild cat, the Douglass and the gray squirrel, and the others of the ninety-seven varieties of mammal life then existing there. These were the “first families” of Yosemite, among whom the bears and the deer and the squirrels are most frequently seen by visitors, and continue to attract the greatest amount of interest.

The grizzly bears, for whom the Yosemite Indians were named, have been practically annihilated by the white man’s rifle, and only the black and the brown, or cinnamon, bears survive, both of the same species, though differing in color. They still amble ponderously about on the floor of the Valley, thrilling the tourist who happens upon one, or who is happened upon. Not for nothing have we been brought up on the story of Goldilocks and the Three Bears!

Though traditionally one of the most feared of animals, bears are of far more use than harm to the park they inhabit. The common sheep, and their shepherds, have caused inestimably more destruction in the mountains than all the wild animals together. “Hoofed locusts” John Muir called them, and it was their depredations, through nibbling, tramplings, loosening of earth on the mountain slopes, and the burnings of vast areas to provide forage for them, which led directly to the creation of this region as a National Park.

What creatures of contrast are these Yosemite bears! They delight equally to wallow in fields of wildflowers or to nose about in anesthetic garbage dumps. They feast grossly on the carcasses of warm sheep, or sheep a month dead, badgers, gophers, lizards, snakes, ants, wasps, their eggs, larvae, and nests, or turn delicately to a meal of wild strawberries, clover, raspberries, mushrooms, nuts, and acorns!

Since the garbage dumps of yesterday have been replaced by the incinerators of today, there seems to be no common rallying ground, or “clubroom,” for the bears. This was a great disappointment to

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The bear cubs are the clowns of the forest

many visitors. Consequently, it has become the custom each evening to haul great cans of “select swill” to a platform in the woods, where powerful searchlights are turned upon the bears as they scramble for the food, to the great delight of the spectators across the river. Occasionally a camper tourist after enjoying this amusement will return to his camp to find that the bears have been to see him in his absence, taking with them the provisions for tomorrow’s breakfast.

Then there are the deer, equally as interesting as the bears. Where one thrills, the other delights. Their grace, quickness, and gentle wildness all have a tremendous appeal for the Yosemite visitor. The deer are far more common in the Yosemite National Park than the bears. Groups of them can be seen almost any time grazing in the meadows of Yosemite Valley. For the most part, though, with the coming of summer, the greater number migrate to the upper reaches of the Park, particularly around Chinquapin, above Yosemite Falls, and in the region of Merced Lake. Like humans, they will seek the cooler climes in the summer, returning to the Valley and the western boundaries of the Park in the wintertime. This was the time, at the end of the Indian summer, that the Yosemite Indians celebrated their big hunts. It was easier to let the deer come to them than it was to seek them out!

Of the four species of deer which once inhabited this region, only the mule, or black-tail, deer remains. There are estimated to be about 20,000 of them in the Park now. Though spared from the human hunters, their ranks are still considerably thinned, each winter, by the mountain lions, and by hunters outside the Park boundaries. Hunters claim that the deer know where they are protected and that though they may stray over the boundary in search of food, at the sound of a gun or a suspicious noise they make straightway for the Park boundary, for over the line is safe!

In summer these deer wear a thin, reddish coat, but when autumn comes they grow a protective coat of gray. They live principally on the young leaf of the mountain lilac, or a tender sprig of mint or wild cherry. Fastidious and dainty they are in their food. To

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At least 20,000 deer make their home in Yosemite National Park

see them moving, swiftly, quietly, surely, in the leafy-shadowed woods, hardly distinguishable from the trunks of the trees through which they seem to weave, is an endless joy to even the most accustomed.

Yosemite is one of the world’s greatest sanctuaries of wild life. Here every protection is afforded them. In addition, a free nature-guide service is established by the National Park Service to help the visitor enjoy and know the animals and birds more thoroughly. Appreciation, of course, comes only in ratio to one’s understanding, and while one may enjoy, solely through the senses, the sound, color, and movement this wild life contributes to Yosemite, it is only through the knowledge of their haunts and habits that the realization comes that all the greater stories of Yosemite are duplicated here, in exquisite miniature, among these furred and feathered folk.

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Half Dome, 8,852 feet high, towering almost 5,000 feet above Yosemite Valley, like a fragment of stupendous statuary

Indian Legends

- Tu-tok-a-nu-la and Tis-sa-ack

- Hum-mo—The Lost Arrow

- Po-ho-no—The Evil Wind

- Pi-wy-ack—Legend of Vernal Falls

- Tu-tok-a-na

- Tis-sa-ack

The Legend of Tu-tok-a-nu-la and Tis-sa-ack

If you look closely upon the massive face of El Capitan, you will see there the fancied likeness of a man, in flowing robes, hastening westward. The Indians know him as Tu-tok-a-nu-la, and there is woven about him the following legend:

When the Great Spirit first made Ah-wah-nee, now known as Yosemite, and led into it the children of the sun, he placed the great god Tu-tok-a-nu-la on his granite tower as guardian of the Valley, to watch over them and care for them.

Tu-tok-a-nu-la it was who called upon the Great Spirit to bring rains when they were needed to ripen the acorns and make fat the tender grass roots. The deer he would drive from the thickets that the hunters might bring home venison to their women. The streams he kept filled that the-fish might abound there. He was beloved of all the children of Ah-wah-nee, for he brought happiness and prosperity to the Valley.

Then, one morning at dawn, he heard a voice on the breeze, calling to him in tones more sweet than the ripple of the waters. “Tu-tok-a-nu-la!”

And as he looked in wonder, he saw, for one fleeting moment, the form of a beautiful maiden, not like the dark children of Ah-wah-nee but of great radiance and fairness, with eyes blue as the mountain lakes and hair golden as sunlight. Eagerly he reached out to her, but she vanished in a snowy mist, and he knew her to be Tis-sa-ack, who dwelt upon Half Dome.

From that day forward he could think of nothing else but his love for her. As he roamed the mountain peaks and the forests, in search of her, neglect and desolation fell upon Ah-wah-nee. In vain did his people call to him, imploring him to bring rain to revive the parching earth. The streams shriveled up and the fishermen returned empty-handed. No longer did the deer come from the mountains, and sickness and starvation came to the Ah-wah-nee-chees.

Still Tu-tok-a-nu-la heeded them not. He was consumed only with a desire to see again his vision of Tis-sa-ack. But she had

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Azalea time along the Merced River, with El Capitan in the background

vanished, and when she returned and saw the distress that Tu-tok-a-nu-la’s love of her had brought upon his people, her heart was heavy and she called upon the Great Spirit to bring rain to Ah-wah-nee.

At once there came an answer to her prayer, for with a mighty crash the Great Spirit split in two the throne rock upon which she had stood, and the water flowed from its side, filling the streams and the valley. And Tis-sa-ack’s tears flowed down the cleft rock, leaving at its foot a little lake, so that the streams might ever be replenished.

Tis-sa-ack was banished forever into the mists, but as she departed, white down from her breast fell beside the water, where it can be seen to this day in the form of countless white violets.

Tu-tok-a-nu-la returned at last from his vain searchings, and, with his hunting knife, he carved his form upon El Capitan, to show the people he had gone into the West again, always seeking his vanished Tis-sa-ack. And upon the tip of the rock he carved the face of a stern warrior, to guard, in his absence, the Gates of Ah-wah-nee.

Occasionally, it is said, just as the last rays of the sun creep over the crest of Half Dome, Tis-sa-ack comes back, wreathed in a cloud, to gaze once more into the valley she loved so well, and to make sure that the children of Ah-wah-nee still live in peace and plenty.

PHOTO BY A. C. PILLSBURY
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A Jeffrey Pine growing from the rock of Sentinel Dome, 8,117 feet above sea level

The Legend of Hum-mo—The Lost Arrow

[Editor’s note: this “legend” “is almost certainly fictitious” according to NPS Ethnologist Craig D. Bates. It was first printed in Hutchings In the Heart of the Sierras (1888) —dea.]

Little to the left of the upper Yosemite Falls, standing alone from the edge of the cliff, is a great shaft of granite rock, which is explained, mythically, in the following way: It was the day of the marriage of Tee-hee-nay, fairest of Ah-wah-nee maidens, to Kos-soo-kah, bravest of the warriors.

But before Tee-hee-nay should go with Kos-soo-kah to his lodge, there must be a great feast, and all day long Ah-wah-nee was astir with preparations.

Early in the morning Kos-soo-kah gathered about him the strongest of his young braves, to go forth with him on the hunt for the marriage feast. He parted from his bride with the promise that, at the end of the day’s hunt, he should drop an arrow from the cliff between Yosemite Falls and the canyon of the arrow-wood. By the number of feathers it bore Tee-hee-nay should tell what the kill had been.

The day sped quickly while Tee-hee-nay and her women gathered acorns and young grasses, and when the long shadows stretched across the meadows she made her way, with a light heart, to the foot of Yosemite Falls to receive the message from Kos-soo-kah.

The shadows deepened to night, but still Tee-hee-nay received no sign from her lover. Becoming fearful, she climbed the cliff to meet him, and there, at the top, she saw fresh footprints in the moist earth, which led over the cliff—but failed to return!

Slowly she crept to the edge of the rock, and, leaning far over, she saw on a mound of fallen rock the motionless body of Kos-soo-kah, spent bow in hand. She knew then, that as he had drawn his bow to speed his love-message to her, the ground beneath his feet had given way, carrying him with the fatal avalanche.

By means of a signal fire she brought to her the old men from the valley, and the young warriors from the woods, bearing on their backs Kos-soo-kah’s kill for the wedding feast. Slowly she was lowered over the cliff to his side, and, as she whispered “Kos-soo-kah” in his ear, she knew his spirit had fled.

As they were both raised to the cliff above, there, beneath the of grace and energy, from the crest to the river below

PHOTO BY A. C. PILLSBURY
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Yosemite Falls, viewed from across the Merced River, 2,565 feet

stars of her wedding night, she fell quietly forward upon his breast, and the spirit of Tee-hee-nay followed that of Kos-soo-kah’s.

The arrow has never been found. Some say the lovers took it with them, leaving in its stead the granite shaft to the left of Yosemite Falls, in token of Kos-soo-kah’s fulfilled pledge. And this rock is known to the children of Ah-wah-nee as Hum-mo, or the Lost Arrow.

PHOTO BY F. J. TAYLOR
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A camp on the shores of Lake Tenaya, 8,146 feet above sea level

The Legend of Po-ho-no

Many people remark upon the capricious cold wind which, even on the warmest days, is often felt to blow in the vicinity of Bridal Veil Falls. While the white man pauses to admire the gossamer veil of spray, the Indian hurries past, face averted, a dread fear in his heart. Po-ho-no signifies to him “Evil Wind,” and his fear of it is founded in the following myth:

One soft spring day, while the women of Ah-wah-nee were gathering grasses for basket weaving above the top of Po-ho-no, or, as we know it, Bridal Veil Falls, one of the maidens ventured near the edge of the water to pick an overhanging grass. She stepped upon a mossy rock, set there to lure her by Po-ho-no, the Evil One who inhabits the mist, and, in a twinkling, was snatched into the Falls, never to return. Her companions, horrified, and fearing the same fate, hastened back to the valley to give the alarm. Instantly a band of young braves sped to the foot of the Falls. But no sign of the maiden was to be found. Her spirit, with many others, was imprisoned in the water by Po-ho-no, there to stay till she had succeeded in luring to its doom some other victim, and then, and not until then, would it be released to wander on to the home of the Great Spirit in the West.

So that is why an Indian shudders as he feels the breath of Po-ho-no upon him, and he hastens by, lest he be called upon to pay the forfeit of some tortured spirit.

Some ethnologists, however, interpret Po-ho-no to mean “puffing wind,” a happier and, no doubt, more accurate interpretation.

PHOTO BY BEST STUDIO
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Bridal Veil Falls, a silvery spray wafted by the winds as it drops 620 feet

Pi-wy-ack—Legend of Pi-wy-ack, or Vernal Falls

Every year, before the Great Spirit spread his snow-blanket over the Valley of Ah-wah-nee, it was the custom of the Mono tribes to cross the mountains to enjoy the venison feasts with their neighbors. With them came their women, who outnumbered those of the Ah-wah-nee-chees. At one such feast, Wa-lu-lah, a Mono maiden, stirred the fancy of a young warrior of Tenaya’s band. Through all the time of feasting he watched eagerly for the love-sign in Wa-lu-lab’s eyes. But all the love had gone out of Wa-lu-lah’s heart the preceding year when her voice rose in the funeral wail beside the pyre of her dead Mono lover.

When the feast was over, she returned with her father to their Mono home, with never a thought of the Ah-wah-nee-chee warrior.

But her face was ever before him, and his desire grew, till, finally, with the clearing of the trails in the spring, he crossed the mountains to the home of the Monos. There he smoked the peace pipe with the chief of the tribe, Wa-lu-lab’s father.

That night he stole Wa-lu-lah while she slept, and carried her to a bower he had prepared for her, in the home of his tribe. Silent and submissive, knowing it was useless to struggle, she walked before her captor, while hate smoldered in her eyes. Silent and submissive still, she ate the food he brought her.

But no sooner had he taken his place among the braves of Tenaya for the evening meal than, warily as a trout, quietly as a fawn, she slipped out into the forest to the trail which led away from Ah-wah-nee. Swiftly she ran, but scarcely had she passed through the spray of Pi-wy-ack, the White Water, than she heard shouts behind her, and knew that the Ah-wah-nee-chees had discovered her flight.

Nearer they came, and nearer, till upon the edge of the Emerald Pool her pursuers overtook her. With a wild cry she unloosed the canoe which floated in the shadow of the ledge, and with quick strokes paddled to the middle of the stream, where the water ran swift and deep and strong.

Erect, defiant, with her long black hair tossing on the wind, she guided the canoe to the current which glides over the edge of the

PHOTO BY BEST STUDIO
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Vernal Falls, where the Merced River plunges with steady roar 317 feet

cliff and dashes itself to pieces on the rocks below. And even as the young chief sprang into the icy water, in one last effort to reclaim his stolen bride, the boat slipped over the edge of the cliff, and the spirit of Wah-lu-lah sought refuge with that of her Mono lover with whom she had kept faith.

“I do not know of any place where the tranquil beauty of shadow can be so well seen and felt and studied as in this deep, serene valley. On this unlimited canvas light paints with a mighty brush, in broad half-miles of cobalt and purple and gold and grey. There is continual variety in noting the day-long, quiet changes; continual variety and continual discovery. One may have studied El Capitan and the Sentinel and Half Dome a score of times, and think that one knows them through and through and yard by yard; but the next observation will show some clouding of color or massing of shadow that quite alters your conception. Even the solid outlines seem to change, and a slant of sunlight or a skein of mist will upset the most fixed topographical conclusions.”

—J. Smeaton Chase in “Yosemite Trails.”

PHOTO BY ANSEL ADAMS
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Groves of Quaking Aspens greet the traveler along Yosemite Trails

Legend of Tu-tok-a-na

[Editor’s note: this “legend” “was almost certainly fabricated” according to NPS Ethnologist Craig D. Bates. It was first published in Hutchings “The Great Yo-Semite Valley” (1859) and reprinted in Hutchings Scenes of Wonder and Curiosity (1862) and In the Heart of the Sierras (1888) —dea.]

“When El Capitan was but a bowlder” is an expression sometimes heard in Yosemite. This refers to that epoch before Tu-tok-a-na distinguished himself among all the wild folk of Yosemite. El Capitan, according to legend, was not always the massive cliff it is today. Mythically speaking, it achieved its growth, as well as its name, in the following manner:

One warm summer day, when there were only animal people in the world, two little bear cubs ran away from their home to go swimming. Scrambling out of the water, they lay down upon a warm rock to dry. The sun, and their swim, made them drowsy, and they soon fell fast asleep. While they were sleeping, the rock upon which they lay began to grow. It grew and grew, until it towered up into the very clouds, with the little bear cubs still asleep on its top.

When the mother bear learned what had happened she was overcome with grief. All the animals in the woods gathered about the foot of the great rock, and each, in turn, tried to leap up to bring the bear cubs down. One after another they failed, even to the agile cougar and the powerful grizzly bear. Finally, the Measuring Worm, Tu-tok-a-na, humblest of all the mountain peoples, began to climb up the face of the cliff. Inch by inch he made his way until he reached the top, and there he found the bear cubs and took them back to their waiting mother. Overjoyed by the rescue, the animals hereafter called the cliff by the name of the valiant measuring worm, and it is still known as Tu-tok-a-nu-la.

A sequel to this story, no less amazing than the original, is that Tu-tok-a-na, elated by his prowess, began now to “show off” a bit. He climbed again to the top of the cliff, and, stretching himself clear across the Valley, drew himself over. Then he returned, repeating his acrobatics until he so weakened the walls of the Valley that they caved in, thus widening the canyon at this point quite noticeably.

PHOTO BY BEST STUDIO
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El Capitan, guardian of Yosemite, rises abruptly 3,604 feet from the floor of the Valley

Legend of Tis-sa-ack

Long, long ago, before the Great Spirit had peopled Ahwahnee, an Indian woman, called Tis-sa-ack, and her husband, Nangas, left the plains of the Merced Valley to cross the high mountains before them. Weary from long days of climbing, and laden with burdens, they reached Ahwahnee at last, parched for water. It had been many days now since they had tasted of water, and eagerly they stumbled on to Ah-wei-ya, or Mirror Lake, where they would refresh themselves.

Tis-sa-ack, arriving first, set her papoose in its basket on the ground beside her, and, bending over, drank thirstily from the lake. Again and again she filled her basket and drank deeply from it. So great was her thirst that by the time her husband arrived not a basketful of water remained.

In great anger, Nangas turned upon his wife and began to beat her. Tis-sa-ack, in fright, ran from him, but he pursued her, striking her as he ran. At last, in pain and humiliation, Tis-sa-ack turned upon her husband, and threw her burden basket at him.

The Great Spirit, angered by all this tumult in his peaceful Ahwahnee, straightway turned them all into stone. Nangas became Washington Column and North Dome. The upturned burden basket, hurled by his weeping wife, became Basket Dome. The forgotten papoose in his basket, became the Royal Arches, while Tis-sa-ack herself became that great monument, Half Dome, which is still streaked with the tears of shame which streamed down her face at her husband’s beating.

PHOTO BY DE COU
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Mirror Lake, where at sunrise Mt. Watkins, 4,000 feet above the lake, is reflected perfectly in its waters

Upon Beholding Yosemite

“The overpowering sense of the sublime, of awful desolation, of transcendent marvelousness and unexpectedness, that swept over us as we reigned our horses sharply out of green forests, and stood upon a high jutting rock that overlooked this rolling, upheaving sea of granite mountains, holding, far down in its rough lap, the vale of meadow and grove and river—such a tide of feeling comes at rare intervals in any life. It was the confrontal of God face to face, as in great danger, or sudden death. All that was mortal shrank back; all that was immortal swept to the front and bowed down in awe.”

—Samuel B. Bowles.

Acknowledgments

The author of this book wishes here to call attention to several very excellent books on Yosemite now in circulation, each with a distinct and definite purpose. For the reader who desires a complete, interesting, and accurate compendium of facts, there is Ansel F. Hall’s “Handbook of Yosemite National Park.” Those interested primarily in the Indian lore will enjoy Herbert Earl Wilson’s “The Lure and the Lore of Yosemite,” as well as Galen Clark’s “Indians of Yosemite.” For the Indian legends themselves, C. Hart Merriam’s “The Dawn of the World” and Bertha Smith’s “Indian Legends” are recommended. Keenest appreciation of the beauties of Yosemite are to be found in John Muir’s “Yosemite” and “My First Summer in the Sierras,” and in J. Smeaton Chase’s “Yosemite Trails.” For its abundance of rare photographs, as well as for its information, John W. Williams’ “Yosemite and the High Sierras” is exceedingly interesting. Dr. L. H. Bunnell gives the most authoritative early history of Yosemite in his book entitled “The Discovery of Yosemite.”

To all these books, and more, the author makes acknowledgment for much of the material here presented. The author wishes further to extend personal thanks to Mr. Francis Farquhar for the liberal use of his extensive Sierra library, and to the Old-Timers who have given first-hand information.

One further word in connection with the legends included. Though the germ of them sprang originally from authentic Indian lore, by their many repetitions they have become so embroidered and embellished by the white man that only a flavor of the true Indian legend remains. However, they are the current stories still told about the distinctive features of Yosemite, and they are deemed worthy of one more repetition on that account. Versions of the same legend vary so in detail that the writer has ventured, in one or two instances, to give a composite of the most prevalent accounts, maintaining always a strict adherence to the underlying theme, or motif, of the legend, while risking the embroidering of one more eyelet in this fabric of fancy.

PHOTO BY F. J. TAYLOR
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One of the Black Pools along the Tioga Road, Mt. Hoffman in the background, and its reflection

Administration

Yosemite narrowly escaped falling into the hands of private vate owners seeking to exploit its wonders for profit. In 1866, when Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove of Big Trees were declared a public park by the Legislature of California, numerous land, timber, and mining claims had been established already within the area that is now the park. The state park was made possible by an act of Congress ceding the Valley and the Mariposa Grove to the State of California.

In 1890, Congress established a reservation of the wonderful area of mountain peaks, glaciers, forests, lakes, and meadows adjacent to Yosemite Valley, and for sixteen years there were two Yosemite parks, the one national, the other state owned, the former surrounding the latter. In 1906, the California Legislature ceded Yosemite Valley and the Mariposa Grove back to the Federal Government, and the following year the U. S. troops entrusted with patrolling Yosemite Park took over the administration of the Valley and the Big Trees Grove.

Not until 1914, when the National Park Service was created as a division of the U. S. Department of the Interior, did civilian administration of Yosemite begin. Since that time Yosemite has been under the direction of a civilian superintendent, representing the National Park Service, and in charge of a force of civilian rangers, engineers, and other employes. Their task is not only that of maintaining order and protecting the wild life, but also that of building roads and bridges, providing water, electricity, telephone service, and sanitary facilities to the tens of thousands who make Yosemite their temporary home in the summertime.

Since its formation, the National Park Service has done much toward absorbing the private holdings in Yosemite National Park. Timber claims have been acquired by trading national forest stands for those of private companies in Yosemite. A few private land holdings still exist, but in time it is hoped to make the entire park public. Mining is no longer permitted.

In addition to strictly administrative functions, the National Park

PHOTO BY GEO. E. STONE
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Yosemite Valley in winter when the carpets of snow are spread for winter sports

Service now offers educational facilities for those interested in the geology, the flora and fauna, or the history of Yosemite. The Yosemite Museum has gathered exhibits illustrating these fields of study. A nature-guide service each summer conducts expeditions for those interested in the lore of the great out-of-doors. In addition, in the Administration Building, an information ranger is always at the command of the public, to furnish information regarding roads, trails, fishing streams, or trips into the back country. Both the Museum and the Administration Building are in New Yosemite Village.

Readers of this little book may care to add to its contents their own reactions or their favorite photographs. To this end, the following pages are dedicated.

http://www.yosemite.ca.us/library/lights_and_shadows/